TV Review: Great Thinkers (BBC Four); the London Riots (all news channels)

I don’t know how he did it, but a few weeks ago Evan Davis managed to smuggle a quite shocking heresy past the the BBC editors. In an episode of Made in Britain he argued, gently but persuasively, that the primary cause of the collapse of heavy British industry in late 20th Century was in fact global competition (eg. the Japanese building ships for a fraction of the price of the Geordies) and not, as we had all been led to believe, the evil machinations of Margaret Thatcher, who of course despised the common men whose votes she kept winning.

Fortunately, BBC Four was on hand this week to restore some normality. Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words gave us a nice easy-to-follow la-dee-da narrative in which dear old Bertrand Russell begat dear old John Maynard Keynes, who laid the groundwork for dear old William Beveridge, who between them gave us our beloved welfare state, envy of the world. Thus progress. Heretics Keith Joseph and Milton Friedman made appearances, but only as eccentrics and, unlike the dear old trio mentioned above, we heard not only their Own Words but also the Words of other talking heads explaining just why they were such weirdos.

We also had some Tariq Ali. I’m not sure even the Beeb would count that colossal clown as a Great Thinker, but nonetheless Tariq’s Own Words we got, and plenty of them. There he was, handsomely and eloquently praising himself and the Soviets, and inciting revolution amongst long-haired youths in the 1960s. It made for fascinating viewing in between visits to the news channels for the latest match reports from London. Rather sweetly, the middle-class Boomers – the first truly pampered generation in British history – had a clear political cause for their student civil disorder, based on a romantic but quite misguided notion that there was an urgent problem of a societal hierarchy in which the Oppressed class needed to violently overthrow the Oppressor establishment to make way for Utopia.

The British working man’s resolute refusal to show any interest in playing the role assigned to him did not prevent the ultimate political triumph of wishful Boomer theories about social welfare and, disastrously, education, the eventual result of which has been the creation of two Britains: the educated Working Britain and the uneducated Welfare Britain, now at least three generations deep into the hopeless mire. In August 2011 the latter is burning and looting the former. Then the former is getting up the next day and volunteering to help clear up the mess in the streets. This is quite possibly the first direct interaction the two Britains have ever had outside of the occasional humiliation of a deluded chav by Simon Cowell or the prawn sandwich-muffled cheering of Wayne Rooney by Old Trafford daytrippers.

It was instructive to hear the real actual Own Words of William Beveridge. The father of the ‘welfare state’ refused the term, explicitly insisting that there should be a two-way contract between the individual and the state, not that the state should simply provide welfare. Benefit should be a bare amount to keep you in body and soul, said Beveridge, but not enough to be ‘content’. How unprogressive! The post-Tariq Boomers wanted people to be more content on their welfare, and the fact that being robbed from birth of individual dignity and personal ambition is a direct route to discontent is just yet another in the long litany of sad human ironies lost on them in their blundering attempts to do good. This week, from the hopeless sink estates, the Welfare boys pour into our city centres to loot and burn, augmented by professional thieves and a few weekend radicals and Tesco-protestors. But, all this will pass and Britain will continue, Britain will endure, and the causes of these riots, like those of all the many London riots before them, will be decided and mythologised in time. And at least they’re not race riots…Oh how heartening to see black and white and brown engaging so harmoniously in the useless, faddish destruction of small High Street businesses. Thus progress.

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38 thoughts on “TV Review: Great Thinkers (BBC Four); the London Riots (all news channels)

  1. Gaw
    August 10, 2011 at 07:49

    Good piece in the FT:

    [T]the gulf between these two groups – the rioters and the cleaners-up – has been papered over by prosperity, but has actually widened as incomes rose. We have a generation of young people reared on cheap luxuries, especially clothes and technology, but further than ever from the sort of wealth that makes them adults. A career, a home of your own – the things that can be ruined by riots – are out of sight. Reared on a diet of Haribo, who is surprised when they ransack the sweetshop?

    I have a feeling gangs will be important in this whole thing: an opportunistic but well-organised diversification from drug dealing to looting.

    The only short-term response is the imposition of order by the state and, where possible, communities (“don’t f*** with the Turks!”). God knows what you do longer term. Bring back national service!?

  2. jameshamilton1968@googlemail.com'
    James Hamilton
    August 10, 2011 at 09:44

    I don’t know. Left or right, everyone seems to be discovering from the riots that their political outlook was right all along. And that the riots were caused by their opponents’ ideas having had a free run for forty years.

  3. jameshamilton1968@googlemail.com'
    James Hamilton
    August 10, 2011 at 09:53

    (Sorry, just realized I’d left out a third feature: regardless of the political slant of an explicatory riots piece, it will be backward-looking. The cause of what is going on is in the past – and the solution to it is also in the past, and by implication, because the wrong kind of people are in charge, unlikely to be instigated. The problem is always down to a wrong turning in the past, and is now extrapolated into the future, growing and growing).

    • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
      August 10, 2011 at 19:46

      Thing is, James, you can talk about the vagaries of political theory all you like, but the plain fact is that its been bleedin’ obvious for years that in every British city there are at least three or four no-go areas, and everyone knows them, which are populated by a hopeless, uneducated, absent-fathered welfare-dependant underclass, and successive governments have ignored or exacerbated the problem. It’s not even a question of Left or Right any more, it’s just that we have to address it. Labour’s failure to even look at it in 13 years is the biggest disgrace of their legacy. IDS and Frank Field are the first politicians I can remember to attempt imaginative solutions; none of it seems to be being implemented however.

      • Gaw
        August 10, 2011 at 20:10

        I agree with Brit: I think the problem is simply described.

        However, its causes seem to me to be multifarious and very complicated to reverse: family policy and mores, attitudes to sex, changes in the labour market, the economics and legality of drugs, urban planning decisions, incentives created by welfare payments, a materialist view of life, the glamorization of violence, the lack of social mobility, the role and effectiveness of education, the culture of human rights, attitudes to masculinity. I bet they all play some part (and there may well be quite a few more).

        Sort that lot out. And do it without upsetting a load of people who are perfectly happy with how we manage those things and would deny any connection.

        • Brit
          August 10, 2011 at 20:17

          Indeed. Every time IDS came out with a proposal last year – perfectly non-ideological, apolitical ones – he got howled down by Labour politicians. An example being Ed Miliband (before he was leader) opposing proposals to increase geographical mobility amongst council tenants so that they could move from one estate to another on the grounds that it was Norman Tebbit’s ‘on yer bike’ message.

          Such is the level of political debate we’re dealing with.

          • Gaw
            August 10, 2011 at 20:27

            None of the mainstream party leaderships really give a damn. Not only are the solutions complicated and inflammatory, the underclass is electorally insignificant. A bit of principled, extremely controversial and probably electorally thankless leadership would be most welcome. Perhaps these riots will be the catalyst – though I have next to no expectations.

          • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
            August 10, 2011 at 22:29

            Yes and no, I think. Yes many of the problems are insoluble by politicians, and yes the underclass is electorally insignificant (though if the middle class decide the underclass is their problem after all that problem diminishes). But it could (not likely, but could) be possible to at least begin implementing an attempt at a solution if Labour agreed to support an IDS/Field-led cross-party committee on social reform without constant point-scoring or pandering to guardianist prejudices. Ha ha. But following the LibCon Coalition I’ve started to almost believe nothing is impossible.

            I do think that if David and not Ed Miliband was leader the chances would be greater.

        • Gaw
          August 10, 2011 at 20:20

          Oh yeah – more immediately there are the questions of how we expect the police to behave in pressure situations (not forgetting that this has implications for all such situations where they have a job to do) and what we think permissible as self-defence for communities (chasing potential looters down the road with doner kebab knives, keeping off the streets to let the police do their job or holding peace vigils to reclaim said streets?)

          Strangely, none of our leaders seems to have a clue about how to answer clearly these two questions.

      • jameshamilton1968@googlemail.com'
        James Hamilton
        August 11, 2011 at 11:04

        Brit, I ran homework clubs for 7 years in what you call a no-go area. I know the kids, their parents, the background. Until I was 8 years old, it was my background too: I was in a fatherless family, in a place called Black Tom in Bedford.

        What I’m watching is a debate taking place between people who, for the most part, for all their political views, whether left or right, live identical lives and live them in the expectation that their political views will never actually impinge upon those lives, will never call upon them to actually do anything. I’m watching people going to lengths to point out that THEIR VIEWS! are vindicated by what’s happened, whatever those views happen to be. Anyone here expressing surprise? or waiting to learn?

        Plenty, however, of “it’s time to deal with this!”, meaning, basically, everyone must adopt MY political views NOW – but then, that was the case two weeks ago. People are unwilling to admit that their man/woman-of-the-world judgements aren’t the products of experience when experience so visibly leaves them unchanged.

        But reading the scenarios people put up here, I’d like to ask – in the rare instances when a “how” is added to the “what” (lack of God? These are some of the least Godless areas of the country, for heaven’s sake! Black churches? Back-street mosques? Ever been?), if those solutions are applied, and in ten year’s time things are much the same, then will anyone admit error or culpability?

        • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
          August 11, 2011 at 11:39

          Agree with your gist, James. The riots are one thing – surprise to everyone in the scale of opportunistic criminality etc.

          But the general debate about the underclass has been going on for years – especially with IDS’s projects – and it seems perfectly natural that these events should trigger a re-opening. Opinions – like arseholes – everyone has one, and the internet is where people go to opine. So while on the one hand I agree about the instant punditry, on the other it seems a bit pointless to make a meta-complaint about it (and perhaps a hint of Blogmanship (TM) and the plague-on-both-houses Stopper?)

          • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
            August 11, 2011 at 11:57

            Re: the narrower issue of the riots, there’s a sane piece by David Aaranovitch in today’s Times which is worth seeking out. In a nutshell: a small number of violent males on a thrill-seek can create wholly disproportionate mayhem (see football hooligans, anarchists etc).

          • wormstir@gmail.com'
            August 11, 2011 at 14:32

            funny appraisal in that link that frank has posted below – saying that “.. these riots…are not demonstrations, but parties that got out of hand, with fires and prizes”

    • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
      August 10, 2011 at 20:06

      As I said, it’s not a question of Left or Right but of practical solutions, but I’ve been arguing on t’internet that this is the single biggest issue in British society since long before it suddenly became an urgent topic this week, and I’ve found that, for whatever reason, it’s the Guardian-readers who hammer you for it.

  4. Worm
    August 10, 2011 at 10:01

    Of course the riots are all the more sinister to the news conglomerates because people are using social media, which is a faceless evil that scares non-techno savvy daily mail reading boomers no end. Those devious rioters!

    Great commentary Brit, and it looks even better on my new 50 inch flat screen

    • info@shopcurious.com'
      August 10, 2011 at 12:50

      LOL

  5. finalcurtain@gmail.com'
    mahlerman
    August 10, 2011 at 10:05

    Technology has ensured that four of Beveridge’s Five Giants have been defeated, but sixty years on the old boy would surely admit that the fifth, Idleness, is a tougher nut and, to an extent, promoted by defeat of the other four.
    Is it surprising that if an individual, or a family, can arrive here and immediately receive shelter and funding at a level that makes a nonesense of Sir William’s laudable concept, that this individual, and thousands like him, might have the edge taken off his appetite for seeking paid employment? Back in the 1950’s those State funds were meant to keep body and soul together (just) while you sought paid employment. What we saw the other night was people stealing plasma tv’s and computers, items that they already own c/o the discredited benefits system.

  6. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    August 10, 2011 at 10:23

    Strange is it not, the number of times those three little letters crop up in any discourse about the blind alley we find ourselves in today…BBC. Its metamorphosis is long overdue.
    Max Hastings, whatever you may think of him, in todays Mail, a newspaper somewhat lacking in seriousness, says it all really, it’s all there, the nuts and bolts of it, the entire sorry tale.

    Swan Hunters built a ‘supertanker’, only one, the next one was built by the Koreans, for the same cost that Swan Hunters had allowed in their offer, for the material. John Snow please note.

    Why are alleged great thinkers so wonky, I mean, have you read Eyeless in Gaza, Huxley must have been the champion wafflemonger, out waffled dotty old Bertie by a mile.

    We shan’t even go near the French..”I think, therefore I am”, never, there’s a surprise and here was me thinking…..

    PS, now now lads and lasses, at a time like this it’s tempting to give the old ‘bring back national service’ wheeze an airing, don’t, it never worked, honestly, it turned potential hard men into hard men trained in the martial arts. The Services hated it, not their job, babysitting. Try a Harry Potter, turn ’em into toads.

  7. john.mullen@bbc.co.uk'
    John Mullen
    August 10, 2011 at 10:27

    Hello, I’m the series producer of Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words.

    While this is a well-written, provocative piece, I don’t recognise the caricature of my programme.

    We were extremely careful to give equal airtime to both the left and right. Hayek, Friedman and Joseph were not treated as “eccentrics”, but in exactly the same manner as all of our great thinkers.

    I would like you to show an example of a talking head saying why they were “weirdos”. We interviewed John Redwood, and included a comment of David Miliband that was actually complementary about the intellectual clarity of Hayek. The footage of Joseph was taken from a Panorama programme that he was delighted with at the time.

    Re: Tariq Ali – you might not agree with his inclusion. But we did feature Roger Scruton critiquing Tariq Ali and the New Left to provide balance.

    Yours, John Mullen

    • Brit
      August 10, 2011 at 10:50

      Thanks for stopping by, John. The programme was far more intellectually stimulating than 99.9% of telly. I probably did overstate things a bit for editorial purposes, and it is interesting to note the gradual softening of the Beeb’s standard narrative about Thatcher and industry. Fundamentally, I distrust (and am weary of) simplistic narratives – x led to y led to z – and, for myself, I don’t really believe in Left and Right either, just a lot of unintended consequences and damn things happening one after another.

      I grant you Scruton, but re: Friedman, we had him engaged in debate in which he was edited to look a grinning oddball. Keith Joseph was seen being laughed at by students and talking about his own mistakes. Contrast with the footage of national treasures Russell and Beveridge. Keynes was fawned over.

      • john.mullen@bbc.co.uk'
        John Mullen
        August 10, 2011 at 11:00

        Dear Brit, thanks for the response.

        Alas, we had one hour to do a century of political and economic thought – plus we were obviously constrained by the availability of footage (so no moving footage of Keynes for example in BBC).

        Friedman – when I presented the film at Hay, I discussed this encounter with Lord Balogh. My argument was that Friedman absolutely wipes the floor with Balogh – he remains calm, reasoned and amusing, while Balogh (who, as Robert Skidelsky argues, was “on the back foot” as a Keynesian in this period) absolutely loses it. I think it’s one of those great clips where you can see the ideological currents changing before ones eyes.

        Keith Joseph was discussing his mistake of being a Keynesian in the past. And as I noted earlier, Joseph was delighted with that programme when it was first aired in the mid-70s.

        Keynes was no more “fawned over” by Miliband and Skidelsky than Redwood on Hayek and Friedman. Plus your own review picks up the fact that we used footage of Beveridge arguing AGAINST the notion of a welfare state (footage that we found from America that’s never been shown before in Britain).

        Of course you’re entitled to dismiss all of this – but honestly, as a series we tried our best to avoid bias.

        Yiours, John Mullen

  8. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    August 10, 2011 at 10:30

    As I was saying, the metamorphosis is long overdue.

  9. owls001@gmail.com'
    August 10, 2011 at 10:33

    Well I did say before the new government came to power, that riots and the left coming up with some decent comedy would follow, at least I was 50% right.

    The basic problem is the left need an underclass to support their middle class revenue stream. one great big warped mentality. And as you point out its not how the Left set out to do things.

  10. john.mullen@bbc.co.uk'
    John Mullen
    August 10, 2011 at 11:00

    Dear Brit, thanks for the response.

    Alas, we had one hour to do a century of political and economic thought – plus we were obviously constrained by the availability of footage (so no moving footage of Keynes for example in BBC).

    Friedman – when I presented the film at Hay, I discussed this encounter with Lord Balogh. My argument was that Friedman absolutely wipes the floor with Balogh – he remains calm, reasoned and amusing, while Balogh (who, as Robert Skidelsky argues, was “on the back foot” as a Keynesian in this period) absolutely loses it. I think it’s one of those great clips where you can see the ideological currents changing before ones eyes.

    Keith Joseph was discussing his mistake of being a Keynesian in the past. And as I noted earlier, Joseph was delighted with that programme when it was first aired in the mid-70s.

    Keynes was no more “fawned over” by Miliband and Skidelsky than Redwood on Hayek and Friedman. Plus your own review picks up the fact that we used footage of Beveridge arguing AGAINST the notion of a welfare state (footage that we found from America that’s never been shown before in Britain).

    Of course you’re entitled to dismiss all of this – but honestly, as a series we tried our best to avoid bias.

    Yiours, John Mullen

    • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
      August 10, 2011 at 11:10

      A robust defence, John, thanks.

      I suppose my point is that if I was making it, I wouldn’t have started from there. But I acknowledge the churlish element of being snarky about one of the vanishingly few interesting programmes on TV. BBC Four currently justifies the license fee on its own.

      • johngjobling@googlemail.com'
        malty
        August 10, 2011 at 18:32

        Totally agree with you about BBC Four Brit, pity about the other three though, lets hole them below the water line, twenty percent of the savings given to the survivor.

        Fear not, help is at hand, seen exiting Edinburgh at lunchtime today, an entire division of Scottish bobbies, many trannies, that’s the van, not the other sort, blue lights a’flashing, motorbike escort, heading for the A1 south. Not since the miners strike have I seen plod in such a lather, of course that was MT’s fault as well.

  11. john.mullen@bbc.co.uk'
    John Mullen
    August 10, 2011 at 11:23

    Thanks Brit, extremely kind. Yours, John Mullen

    • dkldr@yahoo.com'
      August 10, 2011 at 20:59

      Probably too kind, given the BBC’s track record, but not having seen the programme in question I can’t comment.

      On the other hand I note that no BBC producer came here to defend that Seb Faulkes show about the novel that was thoroughly mauled at this site a few months back, so presumably the sinner responsible agreed with us that it was a pile of tosh.

  12. hooting.yard@googlemail.com'
    August 10, 2011 at 12:33

    I’ve been amused by the fuddle-brained attempts of the – what do we call them now? Progressives? Lefties? Liberals? Chattering classes?… anyway, you know who I mean – to present looting and arson in a “meaningful” light. They are predisposed to view the chucking of a brick at a police officer as some kind of revolutionary act, so they cheer from the sidelines while scrabbling desperately to fit it into some kind of intellectual “narrative”.

    As a side note, the fact that the one shop left untouched in Clapham was a branch of Waterstone’s somehow speaks volumes (no pun intended).

    • Brit
      August 10, 2011 at 12:52

      Harriet Harman was particularly egregious/hilarious on yesterday’s Newsnight, in swift-flowing sentences explaining how she was not going to make political points or excuse the riots, and then how the looting of offies, JD Sports and Footlocker was related to university tuition fees and the coalition’s goal of cutting the deficit.

      • joerees08@gmail.com'
        Joey Joe Joe Jr.
        August 10, 2011 at 14:39

        There was a line in the Liverpool Echo yesterday that made me chuckle, in which they claim not to glorify any rioting but then go on to do exactly that:

        “The Echo will not glorify any riots but Toxteth ’81 was born as much out of ideology as it was of yobbery. Then, a sense of social injustice burned as fiercely as the buildings and the cars.

      • Gaw
        August 10, 2011 at 20:12

        Disingenuous seems the kindest word to describe Hazzer.

  13. henrycastiglione@hotmail.com'
    August 10, 2011 at 13:28

    I was particularly appalled by Ken Livingston’s point-scoring on Monday night. Trying to pretend that that the riots were caused by cuts or the fact that Cameron went to Eton. And Darcus bleedin Howe on Newsnight pretending it was 1981 all over again.

    • Worm
      August 10, 2011 at 21:38

      Thanks frank, Very interesting and well worth a read

  14. outaspaceman@gmail.com'
    August 11, 2011 at 00:28

    When I was younger (21) I was a shop steward in a large factory.
    I was feted by people I considered to be intellectuals.
    They told me it was my job to raise the consciousness of the down-trodden masses, ferment unrest, kill Margaret Thatcher, shake off the yolk…
    Y’get the picture.
    I notice that quite a few of those same intellectuals are now the ones shouting ‘How did it come to this?’
    “Something must be done’.

    Bob Dylan wrote a song about it.

    O.S.M. B:53

  15. rrhodge@hotmail.co.uk'
    Jack
    August 14, 2011 at 23:01

    It’s uranus squaring pluto which started last month. The last time it happened was just before WW2…

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